Many board games rely on random selection of outputs to direct a player's actions. For example, movement of a player's marker on a game board may be dictated by a card drawn from a stack of cards, an output selected by spinning a needle or a wheel, or an output obtained by rolling a die or dice, among others. Of the many possible methods for selecting a random output, rolling a die or dice may be most widely used for game play because this method offers advantages over other methods. Specifically, die rolling requires no previous preparation, unlike a stack of cards that is shuffled, is mechanically simple, and provides a series of random outputs that are independent of each other.
Die rolling may suffer from some disadvantages. Typically, one or more dies are thrown or dropped from a player's hand or a container in a generally uncontrolled fashion. As a result, an errant die may collide with, and disrupt, features of a game, such as the position of player markers. Alternatively, or in addition, the errant die may travel away from the game site, requiring retrieval.
Some of the disadvantages of die rolling have been overcome by constraining die movement within an enclosure, to produce a die-rolling device. Examples of such devices are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,119,621; 3,168,315; 4,049,277; 4,148,488; 4,632,397; 4,643,693; 5,022,654; and 5,445,375, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
A commercial embodiment of U.S. Pat. No. 3,168,315 is Mattel's MAGIC 8-BALL® toy in which rolling a die selects an output from a set of opposite responses. The original MAGIC 8 BALL® toy is a flat-bottomed, plastic replica of a pool or billiard “8-ball” that includes a viewing window to an interior, dye-filled fluid chamber. Within the chamber is a floating polyhedron with a distinct response on each triangular face of the polyhedron. The selected face of the die represents responses that are generally affirmative, negative, or ambiguous, with the suggestion to ask the MAGIC 8 BALL® toy again. Inverting the toy to allow the viewing window to face upward causes one of the faces of the floating polyhedron to contact the window and become visible, thus selecting the associated response on that side for viewing and reading.
In addition to die rolling, games may employ a time interval to limit or regulate a player's action. Thus, games may include a timer to measure the time interval. Disclosures of various timers used in games are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,304,650; 3,724,847; 4,890,838; and 5,607,160, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The advantages of the present invention will be understood more readily after a consideration of the drawings and the Detailed Description.